Vice President Pence Calls First Meeting of National Space Council

Doug Messier News 6 Comments
Mike Pence

WASHINGTON (White House PR) — Today, Vice President Mike Pence announced the first meeting of the National Space Council is scheduled for October 5, 2017 at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The meeting, titled “Leading the Next Frontier: An Event with the National Space Council,” will include testimonials from expert witnesses who represent the sectors of the space industry: Civil Space, Commercial Space, and National Security Space.

“At President Trump’s direction, the kick-off meeting of the National Space Council will bring together all aspects and sectors of the national space enterprise for the first time in a quarter century,” said Vice President Pence. “This meeting will provide an opportunity for the Administration to lay out its vision for space exploration. As President Trump said, ‘We’re a nation of pioneers, and the next great American frontier is space.’ ”

President Trump signed an executive order reestablishing the National Space Council on June 30, 2017. Currently confirmed council members of the first meeting include:

  • National Space Council Chairman, Vice President Mike Pence
  • Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson
  • Secretary of Defense, James Mattis
  • Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross
  • Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao
  • Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Elaine Duke
  • Office of Management and Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney
  • National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster
  • Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats
  • Acting NASA Administrator, Robert Lightfoot
  • Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, Michael Kratsios
  • Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Paul J. Selva.

  • Dave Erskine

    From ignorance I ask if the NSC has shown benefit to “New Space” and scientific exploration? Is this just to further the Conmess Pork? All of the cabinet or related…looks like. Emperors clothes- bobble heads sorta thing….eh?

  • Terry Rawnsley

    Gee, they just renamed the cabinet. I guess it wouldn’t do ideologically to have some real scientists there who might disagree with administration.

  • windbourne

    Holy F%+”.
    I figured that at least NASA acting admin, and Chief tech officer would have a strong science background.
    Turns out that Lightfoot has a bs in mech engineering on testing shuttle engs, where he quickly moved into mngmt, leaving science behind.
    And Michael Kratsios has a degree in economics who then worked for Peter theil’s company making sure of the financing behind each venture.

    Iow, not a single scientist in the whole lot.

  • ThomasLMatula

    Remember, this is about the national space policy not just NASA. NASA is only one small part of it.

    The focus will be on policy issues like space security, the space driven economy (GPS, comsats, commercial remote sensing), and using space technology to generate national competitive advantage will rank much much higher that space science does.

    I really don’t expect them to spend much time on NASA other than acknowledge it’s existing goals and possibly its new Administrator if Rep. Bridenstine is approved before it.

    So since this meeting will be mostly about national security and economics issues I am not surprised there are no scientists in the group. Thinking of space as science is one of the distortions folks get from NASA press releases. The relation of science to national space policy is about the same as it was to national policy towards settling the West. Note that only about $3-4 billion of the $200-300 billion global space economy is spent on space science.

  • windbourne

    problem is, that the majority of these secretaries are absolutely CLUELESS about space, let alone their own area.

    And yes, they still need scientists on this.
    I have no issue with having DOD, DNI, etc on it, but you still need intelligent ppl there.

  • ThomasLMatula

    The problem with including scientists is they will be so busy pushing their next project, looking for bacteria on Mars, Europa, fill in the blank, nothing useful will get done.

    The purpose of the council is to look at the whole forest while scientists will be hung up on discussing individual trees.